jhlurie

Haven't books been written about this? :) Then again, you did ask for OUR definition of the differences, right? In my (fairly uneducated opinion) there is definitely more to the difference than spice. Cajun seems to come more from a tradition of home cooking, and that certainly includes the "everything in the pot" phenomenon. Would it be accurate to make an analogy and say that Cajun food is equivalent to Soul food, while Creole is haute cuisine? That doesn't diminish either of them.

Steven, I have to disagree on your evaluation of "the rest" of Burritoville. Yes, it is totally inauthentic. But (at least at the two locations I've visited) the burritos have been well prepared and have tasted reasonably good--even if that taste wasn't ANYTHING like food prepared by a real Mexican. I wouldn't ever go to a Burritoville instead of a real Mexican restaurant, but in comparison to most fast food? I'd go if faced with a choice between Burritoville and MOST other fast food chains. Authenticity is pretty important with some dishes, but I think burritos have gone the way of Hamburgers and Pizza--they've trancended whatever original form they came in and may be available in inauthentic variations that are also worthwhile. Then again, my main experience with Burritoville was at the Chambers Street location six years ago. A chain can slip a lot in six years, and I've only eaten at the one near my current job in midtown once.

Not to pound this to death, but just out of curiousity, when did the ownership change at Mother's occur? I was last there around 1995 and at that time it didn't seem to be the tourist trap described here. Jason Perlow, one of the guys who runs this site, has been there as recently as 2 years ago, I think, and while he commented on longer lines, at that point I don't think he noticed a decline in the food itself (although, of course, he had never been there previous to the mid-90's either...) I think the main attraction of it in that period (the mid 90's I mean) is that it was cheap decent food within walking distance of the convention center. Of course that very fact may have helped ruin it.

In my experience "holes in the wall" like Mothers are easily ruined by public attention. And a certain percentage of people don't like "holes" anyway. So yes, indeed, it may be nothing more than a tourist trap if people are lining up for a reputation it stopped deserving.

more like 150 yrs (if that matters). and i don't think it has been continously open since then. maybe i'm confusing it with some other pub. but by the looks of the bathroom, *it* is 200 years old. They claim it has been continuously open, even through prohibition. I imagine that in the initial days of prohibition they must have been closed for a short while while they boarded up the front windows, paid off the local cops and arranged the secret back entrance through the flower shop on the reverse street. The men's bathroom appears to be about 80 years old, but that's just a wild guess.

The secret (unfortunately) is to NOT vote for the other sites at all. Every point given to another site reduces the chance of your site to be above that bottom 25 before it gets tossed at the end of the month. The system sucks, in other words.

Since I'm planning to revisit sometime next year, these will be good lists to reference. But, GumboYaYa, isn't there a good argument for having two lists--one for upscale and/or tourist restaurants and one for neighborhood places? You've mised the two, I think. A place like Arnaud's might go on one, and a place like Mother's Restaurant might be to the other extreme. Nola's list seems more in line with this, although you've definitely listed some excellent places.

I didn't see a thread about Mexican food in NYC, so (since I had a Mexican experience today) I decided to start one. Obviously we aren't going to be able to use the superilatives of the folks on the West Coast boards, but with 500+ restaurants of this type in NYC alone (at least, according to citysearch.com) there should be plenty to discuss. ------------------------------------------- The last place I'd expect to get decent Mexican food would be a place called "The Alamo", but I had lunch today in a place named so (at 304 East 48th Street, just east of 2nd Avenue) and it was very much worth recommending--at least with the understanding that I haven't sampled most of their menu. Apparently the place turns into a wild raucous party joint at night, but during the day it was quiet and the food was very good. Unfortunately the person I was dining with had the same entree as me, so I can only give limited data. The tortilla chips were freshly made and had that subtle pleasant aftertaste that I associate with good chips. Two kinds of salsa were provided: a very chunky Pico de Gallo with strong notes of both cilantro and garlic, and a thin green Salsa, with medium heat and a slight nutty taste. We both insisted on ordering the Mole Poblano, although Pipian and several other variations were available. :) Mole Poblano is one of the hardest dishes to do well, and in my experience if a restaurant makes a good Mole Poblano, at a minimum it at least proves they care about authenticity. The Mole Poblano here was brave in that it had the guts to be both bitter AND sweet, as well as moderately spicy. It was relatively thick in consistency and very dark in color. The accompanying Rice was excellent--with the precise balance between fluffyness and clumpyness (are those even real words?) that I've come to associate with really good rice. The beans really won me over. This is only about the 7th or 8th place I've been to in my life where they made refried beans with BLACK BEANS. They didn't put too much cheese on it either... just enough to cover the middle, and the solid part of the beans were still slightly firm, while the refried part was well pureed. The most impressive thing to me were the tortillas they gave us on the side. I don't know if I have the language skill to adaquately describe why they were so good, but we've ALL had mediocre tortillas in our lives and these were not them. They were obviously either made in-house or at an authentic very-nearby Mexican bakery. The surface was slightly rough in that way that tells you that they weren't mass produced, and the texture while eating them was slightly spongy, but still firm enough to not break. If I visit again I'll post more.

I think people are tired of this game already. eGullet has been stuck around 80 votes for the past two days!

Once per day per Internet connection (so you can vote seperately from work and home, I suppose...) As for the 4.8... that means someone gave a 4 instead of a 5! Steven, Jason, Rosie, Bux, etc... you've got to find out who and hunt them down! ;) Bux is right that the list is a crock, but think of the wonderful opportunities it gives us to mock Fat Guy for his asperations AND also to cringe at the design of chef2chef all in one convenient thread! (Edited by jhlurie at 12:00 pm on Dec. 4, 2001)

Xaviar's is 4-8 weeks wait. Plus its a bit on the small side for an office dinner. Legal Seafoods is actually a good bet. Plus they have another location in Rockland county... (Edited by jhlurie at 11:02 am on Dec. 3, 2001)

Gee marthastewart.com is only #82, Steven. If Martha can't do any better what makes you think YOU will. :)

Steven... do you think that the 12,000 per week figure is accurate? I didn't even think 12,000 bodies still passed through the doors of Katz's in a week, much-less ate hot dogs there. By the way, Holly, if you poke around the lower East Side you should also aquire a barrel of authentic lower East side Sour pickles. Unmatched anywhere else in the world...

Lets just say that ANY voting system based on repeated visits is inherently flawed. But it it helps bring people to eGullet then we can help out right? I just wouldn't take the meaning of "Top Culinary Site" very seriously, although I'm sure we can counterbalance the "weight" of sites who have been directing people there for years by voting "5 stars" consistently.

Again, I can't wholeheartedly recommend a 25-year old memory, but if you put any stock in citysearch.com they at least reveal that they serve 12,000 dogs a week. That's gotta count for something. http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/7084968/ (Edited by Fat Guy at 8:27 am on Dec. 2, 2001)

One of these days Holly, you've got to to do a roundup of ballpark hotdogs. At least in the local Northeast states. But its not baseball season now... so... I've never been a big fan of NY hotdogs in general, but the IDEA of finding the quintessential NY dog has a certain romanticism to it. You could visit about a million different dirty water hotdogs carts, of course, and the best you could do is to make sure you looked for the right umbrella (seeing as how they usually advertise the brand of the dog). Maybe you could try a place like Katz's Deli on the lower East side? I remember eating there all the time as a kid and (at least in a 25 year old memory) the hot dogs were pretty darn good.

Of course these are the "top 100 culinary sites" in the sense that these are the top 100 culinary sites who ask people to go take a look at this chef2chef.net website. :) I mean the food police aren't monitoring the results to shut down anyone who slips too many places in the rankings, right? Do you think they send out "Chef of the Month TV Star Martin Yan" as an enforcer? ;) I'm just kidding. I mean if it helps people from other places find this one there can't be any harm in it, right? So I can't cheat by "visiting" from each of my three different PCs. Bummer. So you want to kick thatsmyhome.com's butt... huh? They're dead meat!!! But seriously... Jason, maybe your friend fredlet, who designed eGullet, can sell these guys some design advice... the site looks like they threw the kitchen sink in as well as everything else. Not to mention the hokey "Christmas lights" along the top of their main page... and that spooky Martin Yan picture staring down at you from every page. :o (Edited by jhlurie at 2:34 am on Dec. 2, 2001)

OK. Anyone who recycles cooking oil for ANY reason is already going too far. Is oil that expensive in Scotland?

This is an issue that Mr. Perlow and I recently had a discussion about. The "problem" centers around the fact that most rating systems (the NY Times is more guilty of this than most) don't accomodate for excellence in different price ranges. A city like NY is particularly hurt by this, because it features excellence across all different price ranges, versus a city like London which is top-heavy.

This is the place where I had something called Capsicum Transparent Noodle. Think of the Korean cellophane rice noodle dish Jap Che and you're half way there. Make it much spicier, and add lots of fresh cilantro. It's odd to think of the food declining--I mean the place has only been open for about six months, right? Perhaps the person in question simply went at an off time. (Edited by jhlurie at 10:24 pm on Nov. 29, 2001)

I don't think Tommy was being mean spirited. I think he was playing on stereotypes of New Yorkers with mock-New York tough guy talk. You know... like in "The Sopranos" or "The Godfather". He was trying to be humorous, not confrontational. Er... right Tommy?

Mallomars... marshmallows on a cookie, with some chocolate thrown in... what's not to like?

The new "Cruncher" type of Snickers bar (sort of a Snickers bar crossed with a Nestle's Crunch) freezes really well.

Oddly enough Candy Bars also taste better melted. So apparently room temperature is the problem. :)

Another great installment from BON! BON: are the Oysters dipped or coated with anything else before they are fried in the butter?